Poems (Greenwood)/Therese

by Grace Greenwood

THERESE.

A rose once pressed against thy lips,
 Then gayly flung to me,
Is all the gift I treasure up
 In memory of thee;
It bringeth back that golden time,
 Too beautiful to last,
The glad and love-lit past, Therese,
 The glad and love-lit past!

Then comes the memory of the change
 Which fell upon thy heart,
As falls the frost upon the rose
 When summer suns depart;
And now returns that weary time
 With doubts and glooms o'ercast,
The sad and mournful past, Therese,
 The sad and mournful past!

Young flowers, fair, quickly fading flowers,
 Love's sweetest emblems they,
For naught in life so fitly marks
 Its swift and sure decay;
O type of that frail, passing faith
 So fondly set apart
To wither in its early dew,
 And die upon my heart!